AJFF 2018: 1945

An unwelcome arrival forces a remote Hungarian town to reckon with its wartime sins, in the gripping, superbly crafted black-and-white drama 1945. With preparations underway for an uneasy wedding, tensions are already high when two sober-looking strangers—an elderly Orthodox Jew (Iván Angelusz) and his adult son (Marcell Nagy)—appear at the train station on a sweltering summer day, with mysterious large wooden boxes in tow. The locals eye them with suspicion and fear: are they Holocaust survivors here to reclaim ill-gotten gains, seek retribution, or expose complicity in wartime crimes? As alarm and remorse spread among neighbors, filmmaker Ferenc Török establishes a tone of impending doom, enhanced by striking cinematography and a melancholy score. Winner of the Avner Shalev-Yad Vashem Chairman’s Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival.